Sunday, September 20, 2009

Guns and morons

I am slowly building up my collection of World War II and former communist block firearms. This involves scouring the internet with searches on certain keywords.

Recently, I had a sad realization - most of the US gun-owning community is not mentally qualified to operate a fork, rather than own a gun. Which may explain an extremely high rate of gun-related death in the United States - 30896 in 2006.

Here's a representative post (http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080920100316AAlVQMH):

"Should i buy an SKS, AK-47 or AR-15 rifle?

the cheaper the better, but not if it is total garbage. The purpose of owning one for me is to have a assault rifle before they are illegal. i want something that can pack a punch when the world goes to crap so i can defend my family. yes, the purpose would be to kill, so go somewhere else hippies, this is a hypothetical situation i would like to be prepared for if it ever happens."

"Tactical advantage", "firefight" are the terms that litter the gun boards, so instead of answering these questions in dozens of places, I decided to come up with one meta-response here.

"Dear Moron,

Let me try to answer your question from the liberal/hippie point of view, since this angle is typically not covered on the gun boards you are frequenting.

First of all, this is the stupidest thing I read on the internet today! Why, you might ask? Well, there are multiple reasons.

First, do you really expect that hippies will attack you and your family? Hippies? Seriously? Like this guy?


Second, if us hippies/liberals wanted to attack you, surely we wouldn't storm your house? Did you know that there is a strong positive correlation between education and liberal views? You might not realize that, but one skill that they teach in college is thinking. So if we really did want to get you, we would surely be able to devise a better approach.

For example, we could just wait outside your house, and spray you with bullets from a safe distance when you come out to buy groceries. Or if we wanted to force the events, why not setting your house on fire and then just shoot everything that comes out?

But in reality, we wouldn't even bother with this at all. We'd just send a black helicopter (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_helicopter). As you know, being government/UN freaks, we have plenty at our command. It would take one missile to have your house look like this, from a safe distance:


Do you really think that AK-47 vs AR-15 would make a material difference here?

Finally, even if you really did get into one of the "firefights", I bet you would not have much luck in a "tactical combat situation". I've played with your kind in Halo. You will be the biggest target, in the center of the field, collecting all the bullets.


I bet like with any other profession, it takes years of hard work to train a soldier - not an act of buying a gun.

So take my advice - instead of wasting money on something that you aren't mentally qualified to operate and won't be able to use, buy a book. Or sign up for a history or biology class at your local community college. You really could use the extra IQ so that next time people won't look at your writing and say - Geez, this is the stupidest thing I've seen on the internet today!"

9 comments:

Dave said...

What a horrifying video. It appears that the man is holding down the trigger with something, so the gun is firing out of his control.

Anonymous said...

While I agree with your premise, the "go somewhere else hippies" was aimed at people who would try to dissuade him from buying a deadly weapon, and not at those who would attack his family.

NS said...

Didn't know you were collecting guns.

Anonymous said...

Ah yes, the gun-as-magic-talisman crowd. Rational survivalist Dean Ing had a better solution to the question of how to survive the breakdown of greater civilization: Move to a small town that has a nearby National Guard armory, join the Chamber of Commerce, and become a Pillar Of The Community, either helping elect the leaders of the community or being elected as one yourself. When the **it hits the fan, you then have an organized police force at your beck and call, as Pillar of the Community your local National Guard chapter will of course be involved in helping defend your home and your town, and you will have plenty of neighbors willing to volunteer to augment that police force and National Guard, and all the organizational capabilities of an organized government at your command. Lone wolves simply end up dead when there is an organized force opposed to them. That is the lesson Dean Ing tried to teach to the survivalists who bought his books. Unfortunately, reading appears to be a skill not so common within those ranks... as do grammar, personal hygiene, personal skills, and other such concerns. Interesting, is it not?

Unknown said...

I do agree with you that there is an overwhelming majority of idiots out there. Many people don't know how to handle a firearm, and in no means should ever consider owning such an amazing tool. It is hard to ban the purchase of such a firearm in a society like ours, however, when you consider that the large majority of firearms that are owned in the United States are actually not used to commit a crime but rather ones that are stolen and/or purchased illegally. If said moron wanted to purchase said firearm enough, he could head down to Mexico and get it for a discount price. Lots of middle easterners and even former soviet-union members ship millions of dollars worth of firearms to the Mexican borders all of the time with little if nothing in a form of resistance coming from their government. I also believe that assault rifles like the AK or the AR will be terrible home defense weapons, since the ones you can legally purchase in the US are indeed semi-automatic and cannot be legally fully automatic. Plus with such a long barrel and not meant for close-quarters combat, a personal defense shotgun or pistol would be a much more intelligent choice.

Also he speaks of hippies trying to take his guns away, I believe he refers to the Democrats (often referred to by right-wing extremists as liberal hippie douche bags and the like) as wanting to take all firearms from the American public by putting more regulations on purchasing any firearm. This is because of the semi-automatic ban that the Clinton administration ignorantly imposed on congress (a very ignorant bunch) and felt that it would help relieve violence in the United States when in fact it didn't do jack shit.

thank you for giving me the opportunity to voice my opinion, which is merely that.

Eldar said...

Geeze, Serge, as somebody who has two great colleges under the belt you sure should know better than mixing up privilege and right, legally, two quite different concepts.

As long as gun ownership is the right, it should be treated as a right like the right to vote. Lets apply your logic to the right to vote.

1. Does most of the population has brains to vote? As a voting citizen of this great country who was disappointed with the results of voting over and over again, I don't feel so. Morons are not just on gun boards, that's a landmark of any great civilization that has enough food to feed everybody. While USA is a great example, it's not the only one. Think of USSR...

2. Consequences of morons exercising their right to vote are actually more dire than the consequences of the right to own guns. 2000 and 2004 elections left us with two wars with thousands of US casualties, and if you add dead Iraqis and Afgan people any firearm casualties stats in US will look like a statistical error.

So, following your liberal logic, we should prohibit voting. It's definitely not safe for public.

You see the problem? Rights are not supposed to be safe.

That said, I agree with you that morons will be at the heart of misusing any right people get.

I just disagree on focusing it on firearms theme. I don't think that in "moron+gun" the problem is the gun. Just like in "moron+voting", "moron+car", "moron+alcohol" or even "moron+ability to procreate".

Sergey Solyanik said...

Actually, Eldar, I am not entirely sure that the voting rights for idiots should be all that sacred :-).

Maybe some sort of knowledge pre-reqs ARE in order. I.e. before a person is allowed to vote in an election, maybe that person should have to get a certain percentage on a multiple choice test about the competing politicians' positions.

"Does Obama's health plan include a provision to encourage suicide by the elderly? (Yes/No)"

I absolutely agree with you that idiots voting are far more dangerous than idiots bearing guns.

Eldar said...

Well, "voting rights not that sacred" puts a very interesting twist on liberalism, although, I admit, I see that kind of liberalism very often.

Anyway, even if considering restrictions on voting rights at all, I would rather go with something better than a multiple-choice test prepared by some state official (or, even more interesting - one of the candidates).

BTW, did you see advertised platforms in the local 2009 elections? I don't know about Seattle, but on the Eastside the candidates are completely indistinguishable. Nearly every candidate for nearly every position promises more fiscal responsibility, less taxes for people and businesses, better environment for families, extra profit for cities and "grammophone for every family", without any details on how it is going to be achieved.

pchandran said...

As long as gun ownership is the right, it should be treated as a right like the right to vote. Lets apply your logic to the right to vote.

1. Does most of the population has brains to vote? As a voting citizen of this great country who was disappointed with the results of voting over and over again, I don't feel so. Morons are not just on gun boards, that's a landmark of any great civilization that has enough food to feed everybody. While USA is a great example, it's not the only one. Think of USSR...

2. Consequences of morons exercising their right to vote are actually more dire than the consequences of the right to own guns. 2000 and 2004 elections left us with two wars with thousands of US casualties, and if you add dead Iraqis and Afgan people any firearm casualties stats in US will look like a statistical error.

So, following your liberal logic, we should prohibit voting. It's definitely not safe for public.

You see the problem? Rights are not supposed to be safe.

That said, I agree with you that morons will be at the heart of misusing any right people get.

I just disagree on focusing it on firearms theme. I don't think that in "moron+gun" the problem is the gun. Just like in "moron+voting", "moron+car", "moron+alcohol" or even "moron+ability to procreate". Club magic